Seth Bernard’s research while affiliated with University of Toronto and other places

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Publications (22)


Historical archives from the Roman Monarchic and Republican periods show human perceptions of environment and climate change in Italy, 753–29 BCE
  • Article

January 2025

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59 Reads

The Holocene

Claudia Paparella

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Seth Bernard

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[...]

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Historical archives for the Roman Monarchic and Republican periods (753–29 BCE) offer a highly resolved series of observations of environmental and climatic phenomena in Central Italy. This paper presents a new collection of these historical archives, gathering 319 observations across the period. We introduce the historical character of these archives and point out aspects affecting their analysis and interpretation for reconstruction of past environmental and climatic conditions in Italy in the latter half of the first millenium BCE. Archival information is seen to be generally reliable from the fifth century BCE onward, providing a valuable source about regional past climate. The historical archives’ anecdotal nature along with complexities of their formation and transmission encourage cautious and closely contextualized interpretation, and we advocate the use of this information most of all to understand Romans’ changing experience of environment and climate. We offer comparison of this data to current understanding of regional climate conditions based on scientific proxies, especially speleothems and marine cores. These records show some convergence with the historical archives, and we discuss the possibility that this may reflect a relatively warm, wet climate period (Roman Warm Period) in Italy coterminous with Rome’s initial phase of imperial expansion.


Fig. 1. Location of the 2023 excavation areas.
THE FALERII NOVI PROJECT: THE 2023 SEASON
  • Article
  • Full-text available

December 2024

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2 Reads

Papers of the British School at Rome

Download

Interim Report on the Falerii Novi Project, 2021-2023

August 2024

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31 Reads

Presented are the results of the Falerii Novi Project, a multi-year international archaeological research project at the ancient urban site of Falerii Novi, in the Comune of Fabrica di Roma (Viterbo, Lazio), in the middle Tiber Valley. According to ancient sources, the Roman town of Falerii Novi was founded in the mid-third century BCE, when the nearby Faliscan center of Falerii Veteres (modern Civita Castellana) revolted and was conquered by Rome. The site, which measures nearly 32 ha and presents as a greenfield site today, lies along the ancient via Amerina, approximately 50 km north of Rome. The only standing premodern remains on site are the city’s walls, generally dated to its foundation in the 3rd century BCE, an extramural amphitheater to the northeast, peri-urban tombs, and the complex of Santa Maria di Falleri, whose monastic community is first mentioned in the 11th century CE. Previous work in the 19tth century and that carried out by the Soprintendenza during the late XXth century remain largely unpublished. More recently, however, non-invasive work using magnetometry and Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) has generated plans of the Roman town. The interim results of the FNP presented here build on this remote sensing to create a detailed understanding of the site’s development over its full history. Pursuant to our aims of exploring a range of urban spaces, trenches have been excavated across the intramural area, guided by magnetometry and GPR results. We detail results from an initial campaign of test pits (2021) and two years of open-area stratigraphic excavation (2022–23). Five areas of exploration (Areas I–V) are discussed below, including one, Area IV, restudied by the FNP after some initial, unpublished excavation by the Soprintendenza.




Fig. 1. The location of Falerii Novi in relation to Rome, major ancient roads, preceding BSR surveys (areas in grey) and sites mentioned in the text.
Fig. 2. Aerial photograph taken over Falerii Novi by the Royal Air Force on 24 March 1944. The outline of the city-walls is clearly visible along with the Rio Purgatorio valley.
Fig. 4. Photo of the church and adjoining abbey of Santa Maria di Falleri, taken by John Ward-Perkins c. 1957 (BSR Photographic Archive, John Bryan Ward-Perkins Collection, wpset-0295.06).
THE FALERII NOVI PROJECT

July 2023

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292 Reads

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6 Citations

Papers of the British School at Rome

The Falerii Novi Project represents a newly formed archaeological initiative to explore the Roman city of Falerii Novi. The project forms a collaboration of the British School at Rome with a multinational team of partner institutions. Thanks to a rich legacy of geophysical work on both the site and its territory, Falerii Novi presents an exceptional opportunity to advance understanding of urbanism in ancient and medieval Italy. The Falerii Novi Project employs a range of methodologies, integrating continued site-scale survey with new campaigns of stratigraphic excavation, archival research and environmental archaeology. The project aims to present a more expansive and holistic urban history of this key Tiber Valley settlement by focusing on long-run socio-economic processes both within Falerii Novi and as they linked the city to its wider landscape.


Introduction: A Middle in the Making

June 2023

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3 Reads

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1 Citation

During the fourth and third centuries BCE, Roman expansion into Italy reshaped the peninsula's Archaic societies and prompted new political relationships, new economic practices, and new sociocultural structures. Rural landscapes and urban spaces throughout Latium saw intensified use amidst novel principles of land management, animal husbandry, and architectural design. This book offers fresh perspectives on these transformations by embracing a wide range of approaches to Middle Republican history. Chapters take up topics and methods ranging from fiscal sociology, bioarchaeology, comparative slaveries, field survey, art and architectural history, numismatics, elite mobility, and beyond. An emphasis is placed on how developments in this period reshaped not only Rome, but also other Latin and Italian societies in complex and often multilinear ways. The volume promotes the Middle Republic as a period whose full dynamism is best appreciated at the intersection of diverse lines of inquiry.



An Environmental and Climate History of the Roman Expansion in Italy

June 2023

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439 Reads

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12 Citations

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

A first synthesis of available data for the period of Rome’s expansion in Italy (about 400–29 b.c.e.) shows the role of climate and environment in early Roman imperialism. Although global indices suggest a warmer phase with relatively few short-term climate events occuring around the same time as the expansion, local data emphasize the highly variable timing and expression of these trends. This variability casts doubt on ideas of a unitary, historically consequential “Roman Warm Period.” The historical importance of climate and environment to socioeconomic development merits emphasis, but should be understood in terms of evolving, contingent forms of resilience and risk-mitigating behavior by Italian communities during Roman expansion.


Michael J. Taylor. Soldiers and Silver: Mobilizing Resources in the Age of Roman Conquest .

January 2023

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18 Reads

American Journal of Ophthalmology

Historians have asked how Republican Rome acquired its Mediterranean empire since the period itself, when the Greek historian Polybius posed the question of Rome’s rise as a topic all serious intellectuals needed to consider. In this tightly written monograph, based on a 2015 dissertation, Michael Taylor offers an answer: resource differentials. In his earlier work, Taylor has produced a string of excellent articles on various aspects of Roman Republican military history, so unsurprisingly for him the topic of resources comes down to how many soldiers Romans and their adversaries recruited and how they financed that manpower. Taylor argues that Romans won ultimately because they were able to muster a larger fighting force. The narrative includes a number of fresh and more nuanced thoughts about how Romans paid for and deployed their numerical advantage. The introduction and conclusion gesture to Michael Mann’s theory of infrastructural power, but the granular exposition of ancient manpower and state budgets that makes up the bulk of the volume will appeal above all to specialist readers. What makes Taylor’s work original is his juxtaposition of tallies for Roman resources beside those of Rome’s opponents—namely, Carthage and the Hellenistic kingdoms. The core of the book falls neatly into two parts, each dividing into chapters on the manpower and then finances of Rome and its rivals. The time frame moves from the war against Pyrrhus through the Third Macedonian War (ca. 280–168 BCE). For Roman resources, Taylor relies largely on figures found in extant narratives of Polybius and Livy. For Rome’s rivals, the approach varies according to more heterogeneous source materials. This difference is most noticeable with regard to Carthage, in which discussion perforce relies heavily on Roman authors, with all the rhetorical problems such a perspective implies. But Taylor is duly cautious and provisional where need be, and he ultimately creates a detailed and sound basis for comparison.


Citations (8)


... Excavations continued to explore a domus along the south of Insula XLIV (Keay et al., 2000). A square area (8 x 8 m), opened immediately east of last year's trench (Andrews et al., 2023b), revealed a series of rooms along the north of the trench and a large interior space to the south. These were divided by a long ashlar wall running across the extent of the trench and forming the continuation of an ashlar wall discovered in excavations of 2022. ...

Reference:

THE FALERII NOVI PROJECT: THE 2023 SEASON
THE FALERII NOVI PROJECT: THE 2022 SEASON
  • Citing Article
  • November 2023

Papers of the British School at Rome

... We are most grateful to all of them. In addition to those colleagues noted above, we remain extremely appreciative of all individuals and institutions that have supported our research in the eastern Caelian, notably: (Andrews et al., 2023a). Excavation concentrated on three areas of the city: work continued in Areas I (macellum) and II (domus), while Area III in the southern sector of the town was closed and a new Area V opened above a series of tabernae along the northwestern side of the forum piazza ( Fig. 1). ...

THE FALERII NOVI PROJECT

Papers of the British School at Rome

... However, since the empire's intensive deforestation and unsustainable farming led to soil erosion and decreased crop yields, the peasants who tried to meet demands by pressuring the barren lands for more resources began a positive feedback loop. 22 By AD 300, taxes doubled, and again by AD 364. This period was marked by a declining population, political fragmentation, and lower levels of material complexity. ...

An Environmental and Climate History of the Roman Expansion in Italy

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

... Le indagini geofisiche avviate alla fine degli anni '90 del secolo scorso dal gruppo di ricerca diretto da Simon Keay e Martin Millett nell'ambito del 'Tiber Valley Project' (Keay et al., 2000) e quelle successivamente realizzate dalle Università di Ghent e Cambridge (Verdonck et al., 2020;Millett et al., c.d.s.) non interessarono l'area in esame, che conseguentemente non fu mai rilevata topograficamente. Nel 2021 la ripresa delle indagini archeologiche nell'ambito del 'Falerii Novi Project' (Bernard et al., 2022;Andrews et al., 2023a;2023b) ha permesso a chi scrive di avviare uno studio storico-topografico sistematico sull'insula XXXI (Andrews et al., 2023a: 16-18;2023b: 334). La ricerca, finalizzata a colmare la lacuna nella conoscenza dell'area centrale di Falerii Novi, è stata promossa dalla British School at Rome e dall'Università degli Studi di Firenze. ...

The Falerii Novi Project: the 2021 Season
  • Citing Article
  • November 2022

Papers of the British School at Rome

... intra-site analysis in small-scale off-site surveys) and cannot explain the overall, ubiquitous, large-scale cluster patterns that manifest in a majority of colonial and non-colonial territories. 7 5 Keay and Terrenato, 2001;Terrenato, 2007;Attema, Burgers, van Leusen, 2010;Stek 2012: 244;2013: 340-343;Peralta and Bernard, 2022. Independently of whether this clustered settlement pattern can be explained by past oppressive or opportunistic reasons, or by methodological difficulties in modern recording techniques, it is worth assessing whether the new integrative model proposed works as an additional potential scenario in explaining colonial settlement strategies of the western Mediterranean. ...

Middle Republican Connectivities

The Journal of Roman Studies

... A história da formação do império romano vem sendo contada e recontada por mais de dois mil anos. Um olhar atento para a esmagadora maioria das pessoas envolvidas nesse processo -camponeses, pobres urbanos, pessoas escravizadas, entre tantas outrasalém de importante em si mesmo, pode revelar alguns "impulsionadores de mudança histórica" (Bernard, 2021) bem diferentes daqueles com os quais estamos acostumados a pensar esse fenômeno sem igual. ...

KARL-JOACHIM HÖLKESKAMP, ROMAN REPUBLICAN REFLECTIONS: STUDIES IN POLITICS, POWER, AND PAGEANTRY. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2020. Pp. 274. isbn 9783515127035. €54.00. - KARL-JOACHIM HÖLKESKAMP, SEMA KARATAŞ and ROMAN ROTH (EDS), EMPIRE, HEGEMONY OR ANARCHY? ROME AND ITALY, 201–31 BCE. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2019. Pp. 258. isbn 9783515115247. €49.00.
  • Citing Article
  • February 2021

The Journal of Roman Studies

... Images and texts may lend themselves to various interpretations; die-links, not so much: see therefore Debernardi and Legrand in general(153), and more specifically about the Selinunte 1891 hoard(155), concluding that the early issues of quadrigati were struck over a short period of time, probably not before the 220s. The most important review of Argentum signatum must be that of Bernard(58), building on his previous work(57) to find an explanation for the Roman Republic's apparent disinterest in the regular minting of silver coins during most of the 3 rd century. Attitudes towards wealth and coinage, he writes, would change not because Rome needed to strike coins to pay for either of the two first Punic wars, as previous generations had perfectly been able to comply with State payments without doing so, but because of a "reconfiguration of wealth" and monetary transactions as an attribute of the social prestige of new lineages within the Roman elite. ...

The Social History of Early Roman Coinage
  • Citing Article
  • July 2018

The Journal of Roman Studies